A flock of a few dozen horned larks, small birds with distinctive yellow brows, darted out of a wooded area and crossed high above the path. Clapper, a sort of wildlife sheriff at Teterboro, pushed the brake pedal, stepped out with what looked like a pistol and shot two rounds into the air. The first delivered a thunderous bang like an M-80 firecracker, the second a high-pitched wheeze.
The message: Stay away.
Clapper is on the seldom-seen front lines of an effort to keep two kinds of fliers — one man-made, the other naturally feathered — from colliding over the region’s busy airports. At Teterboro, the challenge is unique and the stakes are high. One of the nation’s busiest general aviation airports also sits on the fringes of the Meadowlands, a popular way station for migrating birds. And the airport itself includes hundreds of acres of protected and strictly regulated wetlands.
Wildlife control at airports has taken on more urgency since US Airways Flight 1549 hit a flock of Canada geese after taking off from La Guardia Airport just over four years ago, forcing an unlikely landing in the Hudson River that averted a potential tragedy. Since then, the Port Authority has put an armed biologist at each of its airports to conduct daily wildlife patrols and surveys.
It’s a job that involves trapping animals, scaring them off with firecrackers, following tracks through mud and snow, identifying species from feathers or feces, setting up hidden trail cameras, and using that shotgun from time to time, as Clapper explained on a recent tour with the airport’s team of wildlife specialists. And it may have earned him a reputation.
“Sometimes they fly off when they see my truck coming, and I ask myself, ‘Do they know?’ ” Clapper said, half-joking.
Animal control efforts at the region’s airports have stirred the passions of animal rights activists. A protest was held outside Teterboro last summer. Airport officials say the vast majority of their efforts are non-lethal. But Clapper, who crisscrosses Teterboro’s runways on his daily wildlife patrols, resorted to more extreme measures hundreds of times in 2012. Using mostly his shotgun, he killed starlings, gulls, doves, raccoons, a white-tailed deer and a red-tailed hawk, Port Authority data show.
Some species are granted more leniency than others. There’s “zero tolerance” for geese, gulls and deer that get through holes in the perimeter fencing, said Laura Francoeur, the Port Authority’s chief wildlife biologist. What does “zero tolerance” mean?
“They shoot them,” answered Pam Philips, Teterboro’s operations and security manager.
European starlings, called “feathered bullets” because their bodies are dense and they fly in thick flocks, aren’t easily persuaded to stay away through non-lethal methods, either.
Hawks are a different story. The single red-tailed hawk killed at Teterboro last year, one of 10 caught in traps Clapper set up on the airport grounds, was captured three times. An identification band was attached to its leg after its first capture, and each time, it was transported 60 miles away from the airport in a special “pet taxi.” But the raptor kept flying back to Teterboro for some reason.
“It’s three strikes and you’re out,” Philips said while surveying a pond near the approach of Runway 6 that was recently covered with gridded wire to discourage large birds from landing there.
“That’s an industry standard,” interjected Francoeur.
“Yes, but I also think it’s also an example of the extra lengths we go to,” Philips said.
Teterboro, which in recent years has had among the highest rate of bird strikes in the nation, might seem like a bad place to locate an airport. But the Port Authority didn’t build it. It dates back to 1918, when it was a base of operations for a Dutch aircraft designer. The Port Authority acquired it in 1949. Today, it handles 300 flights a day on average, mostly private jets carrying business executives.
“There’s always going to be something, no matter where an airport is,” said Francoeur, who was previously the biologist for John F. Kennedy Airport, also built on wetlands. “In an ideal world we wouldn’t want water on the airport, but it’s there, so you look at things like designs and modification of vegetation.”
Bird-plane collisions are still fairly common. There were 75 reported at Teterboro last year, according to federal aviation data, two of which caused minor damage. But reporting is voluntary.
In July 2000, a Cessna 650 hit a flock of starlings just after takeoff, damaging both engines. The plane made a quick landing. Over 40 carcasses were found on the runway.
Nationally, reported bird strikes are on the upswing. It’s unclear if that’s due to increased awareness since the Hudson River landing.
“Since Flight 1549 everyone thinks they hit a goose,” Francoeur said, noting that reporting bird strikes has never been mandatory.
The increased sensitivity is also evident at Teterboro. Operations workers and maintenance staff carry pamphlets with images of birds and species names. They sweep the runways at least twice a day looking for carcasses. They know where to go if they see animal remains in an engine or feces — also called “scat” — which Clapper can usually identify with a quick glance.
“I’m in the field a lot. I talk to maintenance personnel,” said Clapper, who is employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which the Port Authority hired to handle day-to-day patrols. “They know if they see anything to tell me.”
Everything is documented. Any unidentified bird remains, called “snarge,” are sent to the Feather Identification Lab at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington for a positive identification through DNA analysis. The biologists call it “Bird CSI.” The information is used to determine what species are the most common around the airport and how to keep them away. The agency’s so-called Wildlife Hazard Mitigation Management Plan is updated each year to take into account population shifts.
Wildlife control is highly regulated. The Port Authority has state and federal permits to capture and kill certain species. It is required to send regular detailed reports about its activities to environmental agencies. The state’s endangered and threatened birds cannot be killed. And federally listed threatened and endangered species can’t even be harassed without special permission from federal wildlife officials.
In most of Teterboro’s collisions, the planes hit American kestrels and barn swallows, but a raccoon and painted turtle were also struck, records show.
Newark Liberty International, host to nearly three times as many flights annually, saw fewer than twice as many reported strikes in 2012. Most of Newark’s resulted in no damage to planes. But an American robin caused an estimated $175,000 worth of damage to a United Airlines plane at Newark in October, aviation records show.
During the recent tour, on an overcast day, there was less wildlife activity than normal. A flock of starlings in short grass took flight as Clapper approached. A red-tailed hawk perched on a treetop on the eastern edge of the airport was oblivious to Clapper’s demonstration of how a nearby hawk trap worked.
The pitched roof of the doghouse-shaped container, made of mesh wire, is held open by a stick. In the bottom of the container is a separate compartment. The “bait birds,” starlings or doves, that attract larger birds of prey, are held here, with food and a bowl of water. When a large bird swoops down and lands on a perching rod, the top closes down.
“Normally if I saw a hawk like that I’d set my traps,” Clapper said, motioning to the raptor in the distance. On this day, he didn’t set them because, he said, he didn’t want to expose the bait birds to inclement weather. He said he does not usually “harass” the hawks with pyrotechnics, either. “You have to be careful not to chase them into an airplane’s path,” Philips said.
The harassment and traps have a primary purpose: to save human lives, Philips said. But biologist Jeff Kolodzinski said that they also save birds’ lives.
Back at the Port Authority administration building, the biologists were talking about the unlucky ones. Once, a chunk of a bird was found embedded in a five-inch hole of a plane after it landed in New York City, Kolodzinski said. The plane had taken off from Istanbul. A DNA analysis found the bird was native to Turkey, suggesting the plane flew with the bird lodged inside of it.
Clapper opened a deep freezer in the warehouse of the administration building and pulled out others that had gotten the worst of a collision. This is where recovered birds remain until they are identified and documented.
Feathery remains were inside one plastic freezer bag, labeled “American kestrel, 10-2-12, runway 6-12, south xway c.” Another bag held a nearly intact black-and-white owl the size of a quart of milk.
“A great horned owl probably, likely hit at night,” Clapper said, spreading one of its speckled wings. “I think it’s a long eared owl,” said Kolodzinski, initiating a common challenge between the airport biologists. “Sometimes we have arguments for an hour,” he said.
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